


Where There's Smoke

by Copper_Nails (Her_Madjesty)



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Canto Blight, F/M, Fake Marriage, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Mission Fic, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-23 23:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13201065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Copper_Nails
Summary: The only reason Jyn had not arrived at Canto Blight alone was, as Draven said, her “distinct lack of refinement, in any sense of the word.”A RebelCaptain Secret Santa Gift





	Where There's Smoke

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lovable_and_lovable](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovable_and_lovable/gifts).



> Happy holidays, haylestorming! I hope you enjoy this mission fic/fake married!au. Forgive me any mistakes; it's quite late right now, and I promise that I'll edit them out in the morning. I hope the coming new year treats you well!

If Coruscant is the smoke, then Cantonica is its fire. Jyn clears her throat and fidgets with the wide sleeves of her borrowed dress as she stares at the planet’s shocks of spattered light. Each city looks like a kaleidescope as her transport passes overhead; there is night, but it is light and warm and gleaming. The curve of ocean is a too-rich blue; the archipelagos go on for miles. As the transport dips lower towards Cantonica’s surface, Jyn begins to count the overflow of casinos in each city, paired with the bars and the dust-ladened racetracks (and the decrepit houses hidden from view near each).

She forces herself to rest her nervous hands on her thighs, but Jyn can’t stop her eyes from darting to Cassian, at her side, and the other passengers in the transport. Strapped to Cassian’s thigh is a purse full of the Alliance’s slim pickings, all the credits Mon Mothma and General Draven could spare for an Intelligence mission to Cantonica. Jyn resists the urge to bite her lip and focuses on her nail beds, instead. She doesn’t peel back the skin there, but only out of respect for the well-painted designs one of the pilots had pressed on her before she left.

“I’ve seen the Imperial ladies before,” the pilot had said, her own nails dirty and short. “They change these colors once a week; some go every day, if they’ve got the credits for it.”

Jyn’s discomfort had wrangled first Bodhi, then several other pilots from Blue and Red Squadrons into an impromptu nail decorating session in Yavin IV’s hangar. Only when Wedge Antilles had started to pass around a bottle of homebrewed moonshine had Jyn managed to find her voice and thank the first of the pilots properly.

“Don’t mention it,” the girl had said, waving Jyn’s stuttering away. “It’s good to have a bit of fun like this, isn’t it?”

Jyn raises an eyebrow at the memory. The paint on her nails has already started to chip, and the nails themselves will break if she has to fight, but all the same, the kindness was – is – unusual.

The huff she lets out is heavy with frustration. She tells herself it’s directed towards her nails and not the false wedding ring weighing down the fourth finger on her left hand.

Jyn almost flinches when something brushes against her leg. She only manages to still herself when she glances up and sees Cassian watching her with wary eyes. He brushes his leg against hers again, too intentional for her to ignore.

Jyn sits up straight and folds her hands in her lap, compartmentalizing his concern alongside her inattention. Her skin, she realizes, is too tanned for the pale color of her dress.

“How much longer until we land?” she asks.

“Half an hour,” Cassian replies. “Maybe less.” He looks down at his own hands, the cracked palms hidden by a pair of dark gloves. “I’m glad that you agreed to celebrate our...anniversary here.”

Jyn smiles and looks up at him through her lashes, the picture of a doting wife indulging her Imperial husband. “How could I say no?” she asks, reaching out. She interweaves her fingers with Cassian’s and looks out of the nearest window instead of at his face. It isn’t hard to read the way the whole of his posture loosens, but Jyn knows that it’s an act.

Their husband and wife duo is the brain child of General Draven. It works, for missions like these. It’s professional. It doesn’t _mean_ anything.

Kriffing hell, Jyn thinks, unconsciously flexing her grip, she’s supposed to be better at this.

The concept is simple enough – she is Helena Sward, married two years to Imperial officer and assistant to General Grendreef, Joreth Sward. The reality is laughable. The burns from Scarif have just recently disappeared from Cassian’s skin, let alone Jyn’s; she has a prosthetic leg to match his as well as Bodhi Rook’s sparking hands. That they’d have money to burn at Cantonica’s casinos feels almost blasphemous.

Jyn closes her eyes and tries not to remember the weight of the pack now resting on Cassian’s thigh. The mere touch of it had made her skin crawl for the responsibility of it; only Cassian’s hand around her wrist, tapping out the time of her pulse, had kept her from throwing the thing back in Mon Mothma’s face.

Cassian squeezes her hand, now, asking the same question he’d asked in brushing her thigh, steeped in doubt and worn in the thin crease of his brow.

Jyn squeezes back, then breathes deep and opens her eyes as the transport continues its descent.

Canto Blight, the casino, is Coruscant in miniature; Jyn finds the city planet in the sweeping overhangs of the transport’s dock and the curved railings that scream art nouveau and flowing gold. The transport, when it settles, opens to the sound of gravity hurling water over a cliff; to the thunder of fathier hooves; to far away laughter and light, translucent music.

“Welcome,” a red-dressed Chagrian says. “Thank you for joining us this evening.”

Jyn’s fellow transport-goers murmur to one another, pleasure and energy dripping from their pale fingers as they disembark. She stands and reaches out to find Cassian’s arm waiting for her. Jyn looks up at him, some skant inches, and tries to find her friend behind Joreth Sward’s smile.

“Come on, dear,” he says, guiding her forward. “You did seem excited.”

“Oh, don’t worry about me.” Jyn’s laugh is not tinkling; it’s too full of gravel. When one of their fellow passengers looks their way, they see a wife leaning in to tease her husband while, in turn, he flushes red. “I’m just glad we could get you away from work.”

Cassian laughs, a false, nasally thing. Jyn tastes iron on the back of her tongue and forces herself to focus on the footsteps echoing on ahead of her.

It’s a ridiculous mission. Draven, when he’d approached her, had come at her with padd and several files of information that made Jyn’s tongue curl against a flurry of swears that would have undoubtedly gotten her demoted. He’d grilled her about her contacts and the bridges she’d burned. The non-Partisan slicer, DJ, still graced her with his devil-may-care smile and limpid eyes, for all he once knew her as Kestral Dawn. He’d responded to her comm message just quickly enough for Draven’s liking, as well.

“He’s one of our best sources for information, anymore,” the General had sniffed, arms crossed over his chest.

“Of course, sir.” Jyn could taste iron in her mouth, but her irritation could not outweigh the tender excitement a potential mission brewed in her belly. “What can I take with me?”

“Ah,” Draven had mused, something almost like amusement flashing across his face. “That’s not for you to worry about, Sergent Erso. That’s for your handler.”

One Captain Andor, Jyn had discovered later, had received a comm message that morning instructing him to prepare for a mission on Cantonica. Jyn’s professional retreat from Draven’s office had sent her seething down to the den Chirrut and Baze had made for themselves; she’d wedged herself between them and helped them train Resistance recruits the only way she knew how.

(Yavin IV’s medical bay is fond of her, Jyn knows, in a twisted, awful way.)

She tries not to direct her resentment towards Cassian, even as he marches on ahead of her, adjusting his Imperial finery. He’d tried to skew the mission as one between equals instead of between a handler and the Rebellion’s best known loth cat, but Draven lingered in every corner of their behavior, and Jyn -

She didn’t like it.

Jyn tears her gaze away from Canto Blight’s racetrack and reaches out, instead, to slip her arm into Cassian’s.

“Will you be playing craps all night?” she asks him. “Or will you try something new for a change.”

“Whatever catches my fancy, I suppose,” Cassian says with a shrug. It’s almost an honest answer, though Jyn doesn’t allow herself to acknowledge the warmth it lights in her. “Though I could,” Cassian continues, “go for a game of sabaac.”

Jyn inclines her head; it’s a game, she knows, that DJ fancies himself good at. “Whatever you like, dear,” she says, lowering her voice. “You know I love to watch. So long,” she adds, “as you don’t lose us our money.”

To her surprise, Cassian allows himself to chuckle. “Why resign yourself to watching?” he asks, lowering his head so he can whisper in her ear. “To tell the truth, I’d prefer to watch you.”

It’s too quiet for anyone else to hear, but Jyn understands the necessity of it; they look intimate to anyone who bothers to glance their way. All the same, she feels her pulse start to flutter in her throat. When she meets Cassian’s eye, she spots laughter in the shadows he’s worked so hard to cover.

“Well,” she says, pulling herself up to her full height, “I am better that bluffing than you.”

Cassian’s laugh is brighter than the golden light that spills out of Canto Blight’s front doors. Jyn finds herself grinning back, even as the shift from dusk to dawn forces her to narrow her eyes.

Canto Bright – is. The casino is bubbling, not over loud but dripping with luxury and _sotto voce_ murmurs. Jyn feels the muscles of her back immediately begin to tighten; no faces look familiar, but with every step she takes, she has to resist the urge to throw off whatever gaze has settled on her shoulders.

At her side, Cassian straightens up and looks for all the world a proper Imperial officer, even in his off-duty uniform. Jyn casts a wary glance around the front lobby and forces herself to smile something soft and feminine. It feels unnatural on her face, but the steady thunder of Cassian’s steps makes grounding herself simpler.

“Where should we begin?” Jyn asks, taking care to keep her voice light.

“Sabaac,” Cassian replies. He smiles at a passing waiter and, on a whim, plucks up a pair of two thin-stemmed glasses in one of his gloved hands. Jyn accepts the drink when she hands it to him and sips far more slowly than she would like to as the two of them sidle up to the first sabaac table they see.

She perches on Cassian’s shoulder as he sits, reading his hand, then counting cards across the table. With an hour between their arrival and DJ’s, they have time to kill. Jyn tilts her head, then brushes her fingers against Cassian’s neck, tapping three times as she goes. Cassian considers his hand, then folds.

Jyn coos, as a sympathetic Imperial wife should, and doesn’t allow herself to smile. She remembers Bodhi scowling at her from across Yavin IV’s hangar floor while he threw away a similar hand.

“Cheap move,” he’d accused her, but he’d smiled, all the same.

Cassian rakes in a fist-full of credits to take back to the Alliance before moving away from the table. Jyn slides into his seat with high brow ease. She loses her first hand, but as Cassian leans in behind her, she slowly and meticulously weasels the table of their credits.

It takes an effort not to color at the warmth of Cassian’s breath on the back of her neck, but Jyn – manages. She’s gotten good at managing, she thinks, folding a hand full of nothing but air. Scarif had left them with electric skin and dust in the crevices of their molars – that is to say, ruined for desert planets for the rest of their lives. Bodhi’s prosthetic hands and Jyn’s own mechanical leg were welcomed souvenirs from what should have been a suicide mission, but so was the more-frequent appearance of Cassian’s smile and the heavy air that rested in Jyn’s lungs whenever he stood too close.

Across the sabaac table, a Clawdite throws her hand down and swears. Jyn collects her winnings with a passive, if warm, expression, then bows out of the game.

“You weren’t kidding.” The laugh Cassian adopts as Joreth Sward is too tight to be his own, but the crinkled lines around his eyes remain the same. “You are far better at this than I am.”

“We all have our quirks,” Jyn says with an elegant shrug. She presses her hard-won credits into Cassian’s bag and does not allow her hands to linger. Instead, she lifts her gaze and scans through the crowded casino.

They circle back towards the bar, Cassian keeping one hand on the small of her back as they go. Jyn shifts; the warmth of him seeps through her dress and leaves her a mess of hot and cold.

She lets him pull out a barstool for her and tells herself it’s because it gets his hand away from her body.

“One gin and tonic,” she says, leaning forward against the counter, “and one water, as well.”

When the bartender lifts an eyebrow, Jyn nods towards Cassian. “Officers,” she says, faking a sigh. “Always too serious.”

Cassian doesn’t roll his eyes as the bartender looks away, but as Jyn watches him, she can tell that it’s a near thing. “I have to keep an eye on you, don’t I?” he says.

“Whatever do you mean, dear husband?” Jyn bats her eyelashes as the bartender presses a glass into her hand. The sarcasm in her voice is drowned out by the thunder of racing fathier just outside the bar.

Maybe it’s the low light of the casino, or the gold glinting off of the bar’s counter top, but Jyn thinks she sees something spark in Cassian’s eyes. He leans in and, almost absently, taps the wedding band on her ring finger. “You deserve to have a little fun,” he tells her, voice low. “Enjoy yourself, wife of mine.”

(Her back to them, the bartender rolls her eyes.)

Jyn doesn’t look away from Cassian’s dark gaze and takes a long pull of her drink. His gaze flickers to her mouth as she licks a stray drop of gin off of her lips.

“W-w-well,” a voice drawls from the seat next to Jyn’s. She swivels and catches sight of a dark grey coat, and in it, a snake oil salesman with a crooked grin. “I can’t s-s-say I expected to hear anything so sweet in a place like this.”

Cassian’s warmth drains from her in a heartbeat; Jyn schools her face into neutrality to keep from scowling. DJ grins at her, then tips his glass in the bartender’s direction. He exchanges his credits for another glass of bourbon and knocks his ice cubes against his teeth as he sips.

“Helena,” Cassian says, the gentleness gone out of his voice, “introduce me to your friend.”

It’s an order from an Imperial officer to his wife, and though she hates the taste of it, Jyn complies. “Joreth, dear,” she says, “this is Angelo.”

“Met s-s-several years ago.” DJ polishes off his glass, then pushes it back across the counter. “It’s been too long, Helena.” The slickness of her false name on his tongue makes Jyn want to sqiurm. She leans away without a thought, stopping only when Cassian rests a hand just beneath her shoulder blades.

“My husband works with General Grendreef.” It’s just like sabaac, Jyn reasons; this is her first play.

DJ raises an eyebrow. “I’ve heard of him, I t-think,” he says, shrugging. “Did some business with him not too long ago.”

Jyn hums, and she feels Cassian shift behind her. He’s not looking at her, she knows; rather, he’ll have directed his attention to his comm, or the shifting crowd that Jyn can’t watch.

“I didn’t know you had such high-ranking friends,” Jyn lies. The details of their exchange have already been arranged; it’s just a matter, now, of performance. Money for information while putting on a show for the locals.

It’s almost reassuring to hear DJ laugh, at that; for a moment, Jyn is sixteen, the alleys of Coruscant are dark, and the world is hers to take. “I’m full of surprises,” DJ replies. His comm chirps from his pocket. When he pulls it out, Jyn feels Cassian shift again.

DJ, looking at his screen, glances up at her through his lashes. The look washes away Jyn’s flicker of nostalgia; in it, she sees the thick glaze of greed.

Cassian brushes a hand over her thigh. Jyn ignores the heat he ignites in her stomach and instead accepts the message: the Alliance has sent its payment to the weapon’s dealer.

DJ pulls a datachip out of the pocket of his jacket and replaces it with his comm. He bites it with a wink, then passes it to Jyn. “It’s g-good to see you well, Helena,” he says, cracking his neck.

“That’s kind of you,” Jyn drawls.

DJ offers her another fleeting grin, then pushes himself away from the counter. “Stay out-t out trouble,” he says, then glances over to Cassian. “And you – s-she’s not easy to keep up with.”

“I’m aware.” Jyn doesn’t glance backwards, but the tension in Cassian’s voice sends her gaze flashing around the crowd. “She is my wife, you know.”

DJ’s smile grows wider, though Jyn knows the cruel tilt of his chin. “Of course,” he says, bowing ever so slightly, “I would not d-d-debate the expert. Though if she leaves as many bruises on her neck as she did on mine, do get in touch; I know an excellent d-d-dermahealer who can keep you from making your meetings with the general...awkward.”

Jyn closes her eyes. Her hands curl into fists at her side, and behind her, Cassian goes deathly still.

She imagines herself rising and knocking DJ’s teeth from his head; imagines laughing and following him out into an alley to vent until he bled. But she waits. She breathes. By the time her pulse has stopped thundering in her throat, Jyn’s opened her eyes and found DJ gone.

“One day,” she says, without looking at Cassian, “I am going to find that man and burn him down where he stands.”

It’s almost conversational, she thinks; it must be the exhaustion in her tone more than anything else that drives Cassian to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Jyn demands, crossing her arms over her chest. She fights for a moment, maybe less, as Cassian stands and reaches for her, but she lets him guide her away from her barstool and leave a few credits in their wake.

Cassian doesn’t look at her; he thumbs the comm in his pocket and keeps his gaze fixed forward, instead. When he does glance at her, Jyn can see him slipping out from behind his Imperial mask.

“Simple,” he says, “I was wondering which of us would have punched him first, should the circumstances been...different.”

Despite the headache brewing in her temples, Jyn lets out an involuntary bark of laughter. The sound doesn’t turn heads; it gets lost in the whirl and bubble of the casino, but it loosens the harsh lines around Cassian’s mouth.

“Don’t worry, husband,” Jyn says as the two of them begin to make their way through the crowd. “I’m sure we’ll get the opportunity eventually.”

She doesn’t see the way Cassian’s eyes linger on her as she walks, nor does she see the smile he tucks away. Jyn doesn’t flinch, though, when his hand settles in the small of her back. For a moment – just a moment – she sinks into the touch and lets him warm her too-cool skin.


End file.
